Advertising has become an integral part of information exchange in today's modern societies, and plays an active role in the dissemination of knowledge relating to new and advanced products, ultimately leading to an improved lifestyle of a member of a given society. In many cases, an advertisement is received as valuable information, providing new ideas and insights, and is often regarded as being helpful, and even entertaining. However, in certain instances, the benefits of advertising turn out to be its curse. An advertising message is likely considered annoying and bothersome, if received by someone not being a member of an intended target audience. The advertisement then achieves the opposite effect as initially intended. Therefore, a common trend developing in advertising is personalized advertising, providing tailor-made advertisements for a specific audience. The ultimate goal of this personalization is to engender traits and characteristics within a highly targeted advertising communication model thereby generating more successful sales.
Another current trend in advertising is to incorporate advertising media into vehicles, and especially into rental vehicles such as taxis, limousines, black cars, and the like. Several systems have come to the market during the last twelve months. For example, “Cabvision” (www.cabvision.com) has combined the latest screen and computer technology to create mobile “broadcast style” media within a taxi. This presents advertisers with a significant opportunity to reach a captive audience. “Taxi Vision” (www.taxiviz.com) has pioneered a new advertising medium designed to deliver video advertisements to consumers in a unique and captive environment, namely the back seat of a taxicab. This environment offers the possibility to deliver a message to a high-quality audience with little distractions. A similar approach is pursued by “toMarket” (www.tomarket.ca), which has equipped a fleet of city taxis with video screens that provide GPS technologies to the passengers. By using a touch-screen attached to a headrest of a front passenger seat, passengers are able to follow along with the driver, and local businesses get prime advertising space as participating companies advertisements pop up on the screen as the taxi passes by their specific location.
With reference to rental vehicles, such as taxis, the systems as described above, which are referred to as video display systems, are to be classified as non-integrated or standalone systems. A nonintegrated system operates by itself and independently from any other services employed in the operation of a rental vehicle, such as a dispatch system. Contrary to the standalone system, an integrated system infers that at least two systems are linked and optionally share knowledge such as passenger details, rider ship details, vehicle location, pickup, destination, and the like. The integrated solution combines for example video display techniques with dispatch techniques. This interaction between the two systems allows for personalizing transportation in a vehicle equipped with an integrated solution system, in that passenger specific messages are displayed during a journey in that vehicle. The dispatch system for example provides information regarding a passenger's destination, and the video display system displays advertisements and information related to this particular destination. This way, the journey in a vehicle equipped with an integrated solution becomes an integrated part of the destination itself.
Furthermore, the passenger is in many cases committed to an advertising system. He or she does not have the possibility to influence the display of advertisement at will, for example requiring more detailed information about a subject of special interest to the passenger. This aspect of non-interactivity is another characteristic often encountered in standalone advertising systems.
It would be highly advantageous to provide a method for an integrated approach combining video display services with other services, such as dispatch services, in order to personalize and enhance the experience of traveling in a vehicle equipped with a video display system and another system, such as a dispatch service. It would be of further advantage to integrate interactive approaches into an integrated video display and dispatch solution.